New businesses, non-profits bring revitalization and growth to Cedar Springs

BY JUDY REED

The Cedar Springs area received a shot in the arm this year with several new businesses moving in, and even more growth is on the horizon, thanks to the partnership efforts of the Community Building Development Team with the Cedar Springs Library and Cedar Springs City Council.

The big success story of the year is the Cedar Springs Brewing Company, which finally opened its doors at 95 N. Main, in mid-November. It was the culmination of a 25-year-dream for David Ringler, a.k.a “Director of Happiness” at the brewery, and it’s the first time in recent history that a new building has been built on Main Street in the heart of downtown Cedar Springs.

The brewery/restaurant features a variety of craft beers, focusing on German styles, along with a full food menu (which includes German dishes), wine and their homemade Cedar Creek Sodas, which are non-alcoholic beverages.

Since their opening, the brewery is jam-packed every night and it’s amazing to see so many vehicles in downtown Cedar Springs.

“We’ve had a wonderful reception from the community and been very pleased to welcome many people from outside our community who’ve come to visit, often multiple times,” remarked Ringler. “Some of this is to be expected, given that we’re new and over the holiday season, but we’re hopeful that we’ve made a positive impression and people will continue to visit.”

In the beginning it was difficult to keep up with the demand for beer, but people came anyway.

“We’ve remained very busy, which is a blessing,” said Ringler. “As we’ve progressed over the past six weeks, we’ve been able to adjust our inventories to keep up on beer production, which means we’ll be able to fill growlers soon.”

Ringler talked about some things customers can expect in the coming year. “Our beers will rotate and expand regularly, and our food menu will see the addition of daily specials and be updated at least 3-4 times over the course of the year. We will begin hosting live music regularly and we also have a number of events planned throughout the year (with details coming soon).”

He said they will also begin hosting “Community Giveback Nights,” beginning January 11, where they will be giving back 10 percent of food sales to the Cedar Springs Band Boosters on that evening. Other organizations will follow.

He said they will also begin growler sales, and canning their product for sale in the marketplace, so we will be able to find their beers in stores, bars and other restaurants.

“Our spirits line will also be launched, beginning with Wodka and White Lightning products,” added Ringler. “We will also add additional season sodas and soft drinks to our lineup.”

One of the big things will be the outdoor Biergarten, which will open in the spring, and add 70 to 80 seats.

Ringler is grateful to the community for how they’ve embraced the brewery. “Thank you. We’ve been humbled by the warm reception, encouraged by the enthusiasm, and we’re working hard to earn your continued support,” he said.

The brewery is one of several businesses to come to Cedar Springs this year. The brewery bought the Liquor Hut building, which they then leased to Cold Break Brewing, a home supply brewing company; Family Farm and Home bought the old Family Fare building; and Advance Auto built a new building on the site of the old Family Fare gas station. Since Advance Auto had bought Car Quest previously, they took in all the employees from the Car Quest shop on Main Street.

Another company coming to Cedar Springs is Display Pack, who bought the Wolverine World Wide warehouse at 660 West Street. Wolverine’s lease is up in 2017, and Display Pack is slowly taking over the building as Wolverine vacates the premises. Display Pack, employs 225 people, and up to 275 people seasonally. Since many of their employees live in Grand Rapids and those who walk won’t make the commute, they may hire as many as 60-80 people from this area.

Another group who is revitalizing Cedar Springs is the Community Building Development Team, through their partnership with the Cedar Springs Library and the City of Cedar Springs. Over two dozen organizations and businesses in Cedar Springs, along with dozens of individuals, have been working together for the past three years to develop eight acres of land, within the City limits, into “The Heart of Cedar Springs.” This place can be called our own “Town Square,” where the local citizens and visitors can enjoy a new library building, a community building, a recreation center, and an amphitheater, all placed among beautiful rain gardens and sculptures along a board walk on the banks of Cedar Creek.

Donations of land and cash, as well as pledges, as of November 2015, total over $2,555,000. The overall project is expected to cost approximately $10,000,000. The plan is to raise funds for each individual project and to break ground for each facility when funds are adequate. Donations may be designated.

The Cedar Springs Library building is scheduled to be built first, breaking ground early next spring. A Capital Campaign Committee was appointed by the CBDT and they are in the process of writing grant proposals to large corporations and foundations to raise the funds needed to complete these projects.

Checks can be written to the Cedar Springs Public Library and either sent to Box 280 or dropped off at the Library. They can also be written to the Community Building Development Team and sent to the treasurer of the CBDT, Betty Truesdale, 141 S Main Street, Cedar Springs, MI 49319.

Translated, it reads, “One turns water into precious drops by mixing it with malt and hops!” It’s a joyous and pithy encapsulation of brewery owner David Ringler’s enthusiasm for his new business – and, by extension, of West Michigan’s ever-growing love for craft beer.

Inside the CSBC beer hall, Ringler sits at a table with a glass top displaying German beer coasters, a few dozen from his personal collection of 5,000. German flags, also from his personal collection, hang from the ceiling. About 50 tall weissbier glasses – yes, from his personal collection – sit on shelves. Inside the “Bavarian Room” are painted wooden panels, acquired from Grand Rapids’ Schnitzelbank Restaurant after it closed in 2006, and was demolished.

So it’s no surprise to learn that the Cedar Springs Brewing Company is Ringler’s passion project. (The title on his business card dubs him “Director of Happiness.”) It officially will open to the public Friday, Nov. 13, 2015 with a ribbon-cutting and beer-tapping ceremony, more than a year after breaking ground in downtown Cedar Springs.

The 8,000 square-foot new-construction building features a 150-capacity dining hall with a bar and Euro-pub style bench seating. The special glass-top table with the coasters is reserved for members of the brewery’s Stammtisch club, inspired by traditional small-town German bars, which held a table for regulars, often community members who would discuss local issues over beers. Out back is space for a beer garden, which will seat another 70 or 80, and will be open in the spring.

“The goal is to be a public house in the Cedar Springs community – a place for locals to come after football games,” Ringler said. “I also think it’ll be a destination in Northern Kent County.”

It was a long time coming – 20 years for Ringler, a 1988 Northview High School grad who went to Germany in the early 1990s as an exchange student, and to play American football (he was quarterback for the Landsberg Express in the German league). Homebrewing was his hobby, and he learned about German beer culture and the craft by visiting beer halls and enjoying a volunteer apprenticeship at the Fliegerbrau brewery in the Munich suburbs.

Part-German by blood, Ringler took pains to root CSBC in the country’s heritage. A walking encyclopedia of German brewing history, he points out that West Michigan’s beer scene was established primarily by German immigrants in the 19th century. On the door to the brewery’s “Bavarian Room” is the visage of Christoph Kusterer, founder of Grand Rapids’ City Brewery; after Kusterer died in the infamous 1880 Alpena shipwreck, his family would consolidate the beer business with five others, creating the Grand Rapids Brewing Co.

That family is nowhere to be found, Ringler said. He did an exhaustive, but ultimately fruitless search for Kusterer’s kin before he secured the trademark on the name, one of two beer brands he’ll produce. The beer bearing the the Cedar Springs Brewing Company logo will designate American styles. The Kusterer line will be German beer, including lagers, weissbier (wheat beer) and others.

Ringler said three or four beers will be ready by Friday’s opening. Behind the bar are tap handles for a Kusterer Bohemian Pilsner and Weizbier, CSBC’s Blood Sweat and Tears Pale Ale and Yinzers Roundabout IPA, a collaboration with Pittsburgh’s Roundabout Brewing. The brewery is hosting invite-only events prior to Friday for friends and family as a soft opening of sorts.

Despite his experience in Germany, Ringler isn’t brewing the beer. He hired Matt Peterson from Schlafly Beer, a regional brewery in St. Louis, to be head brewer. He’ll use a 15-barrel brewing system customized by Greenville’s Psycho Brew for the open-fermentation process that German recipes require. The system is capable of brewing 1,500 barrels annually.

“Matt is a better brewer than I am. I’m an OK brewer,” Ringler said. “The part of the business that excites me is the branding, the building of the business. I did the (brewery apprenticeship) as an understanding thing. I’m more passionate about the business and the German side of it.”

Peterson hands a glass of the Weizbier to Ringler. It pours a cloudy yellow, with a couple inches of foam. Ringler talks up the German styles as “approachable,” ranging from 4.8 to 5.3 percent alcohol by volume – drinkable for casual visitors, but with a complexity appealing to aficionados with discerning palates.

Like the beer, the food will range from the familiar to the ethnic, with American favorites and several German recipes. Ringler walks through the kitchen, where chef Shaun Wooden chops Brussels sprouts; nearby is a platter full of landesbrot, a crusty four-ingredient bread baked on-site. They developed the menu together, using Ringler’s ideas and Wooden’s culinary expertise, and will source ingredients locally whenever possible.

“I helped take recipes from the home kitchen and make them commercially viable,” said Wooden, a veteran of The Gilmore Collection restaurant group.

On a nearby shelf is an imported German mustard that meets Ringler’s standards for authenticity. He says he spent three months finding a proper Bavarian pretzel, via an importer from Las Vegas. It’s a platter-sized appetizer, served hot and crispy, just like Ringler would eat in German beer gardens. The rest of the menu won’t be revealed publicly until the Friday opening, but it features apps, sandwiches and dinner entrees ranging roughly from $6 to $15.

“We put our own twist on things,” he said, pun intended.

When he was 26, Ringler returned to Grand Rapids from Germany with a desire to open his own brewery. The only notable craft brewers in town were Founders Brewing Co., Grand Rapids Brewing Co. and the now-defunct Robert Thomas Brewing Co. Potential investors shot down the idea, an absurdity in retrospect, considering the 30-ish breweries now present in the greater Grand Rapids area, among approx. 200 in Michigan. It was something that might fly on the East or West Coast, but in the Midwest? No way, they said.

“The goal is to be a public house in the Cedar Springs community.” – David Ringler
Ringler would work at Detroit’s Atwater Brewing, Webberville’s Michigan Brewing Works and at GRBC, when it was located at the E. Beltline and 28th St. He had studied finance, economics and history at Kalamazoo College, and so quit the brew business to become an investment advisor, eventually starting his own firm. On the side, he wrote beer blogs and did occasional freelance work for breweries, and the thought of opening his own brewery always lurked in the back of his mind.

Three years ago, he revisited the idea. Breweries were popping up all over the area, but many focused on American-style hoppy beers, and none embraced German styles. He shopped for locations in Grand Rapids, but, living on the north end of Rockford by the Cedar Springs border, he saw an opportunity in his own backyard. Downtown Cedar Springs was ripe for fresh development.

He founded the company in March, 2013, and the city met him with open arms. He found a spot at 95 N. Main St., adjacent not only to the White Pine Trail, but the future site of an outdoor amphitheater, community center, and boardwalk along a creek, all part of the city’s five-year development plan, Ringler said.

In the past year, the brewery project hurdled some construction snafus, including the discovery of an old fuel tank buried on the property, a concern requiring additional environmental testing. Another was the neighboring building to the south, the foundation for which was unstable. Ringler solved the problem simply: he organized a different group of investors and bought the building. He leased the space to Coldbreak Brewing, a home-brew supply store also slated to open this weekend.

Originally, the CSBC budget was between $1.8 and $1.9M, but the final tally was between $2.2 and $2.3M, Ringler said, separate from the purchase of the building next door. He’s openly optimistic about the brewery’s success. He expects to struggle to meet the demand for beer during opening weeks, and is prepared to close for a day or two during the week if necessary, to catch up on production. No growlers will be filled for the first month of business.

He wants to use CSBC’s microbrewery license to distribute kegs to restaurants, and cans specialty bottles to stores. He hopes to have some cans of beer available for takeout by Christmas, although his first priority is the customer who bellies up for a pint. Ringler keeps the building next door in his back pocket – if CSBC takes off, it will provide space for production expansion.

He holds up the Weizbier, and explains how the style is “the champagne of beers,” at one time only made by the Bavarian king’s court brewer, and once so popular, it wholly financed the Thirty Years’ War. It’s delicious, a smooth and thoroughly pleasing beer with hints of clove and banana on the tail. It’s easy to imagine many West Michiganders drinking it by the keg or six-pack, and Ringler is banking on it. Precious drops, for sure.

The ribbon cutting and first pour will take place at 1 p.m. that day, when full beer and dining menus will be revealed and available, as well as Old Cedar Creek Sodas, Vino131 wines and Cedar Cider. The grand opening celebration will continue on Nov. 14.

The brewery is the downtown district’s first new build since the 1950s, but more is on the way.

David Ringler almost started a brewery in the 1990s.

It wasn’t for a lack of trying. Ringler was educated in traditional German brewing and, had his investors not pushed for light American lagers, the Grand Rapids craft beer community might be talking about Ringler’s brewery as they do Founders Brewing Co. and New Holland Brewing Co. — which would have been his contemporaries.

Instead, he utilized his college degree and started a financial advisory firm in 1999. Ringler never lost sight of his goal, however, and stayed involved in the Michigan beer community.

“When I got married, I had to get a real job,” Ringler said. “I was fortunate that when I really started to get itchy again, I was able to bring on partners that were willing to buy me out so I could do what I wanted to do and knew my customers would be taken care of.”

With breweries opening on a regular basis in West Michigan, many might question the decision to open a brewery now. But Ringler saw a market segment relatively untouched and a community ripe for development: Cedar Springs.

His brewery concept is largely based on what he wanted to do 20 years ago.

“Even then, I wanted to do authentic German beers and build on those,” he said. “Well, there’s still no one really doing it.”

Ringler set out to find the perfect site for his new brewery, including on the west side of Grand Rapids, a historically German part of town. He had friends and family in the northern part of Kent County who encouraged him to consider Cedar Springs.

“The more I looked up here, the more excited about it I got,” he said.

He looked at two buildings, both of which would accommodate a brewpub where he could brew beer and serve food and other beverages — but weren’t large enough to be able to distribute the beer.

“My heart was in manufacturing,” he said. “I love the brand building side of the business.”

So he acquired a building on Main Street in Cedar Springs and razed it. Then he sought and received Michigan Economic Development Corp. funding, and Orion Construction began the project.

It’s the first new build in downtown Cedar Springs since the 1950s.

“The Cedar Springs Brewery was an excellent opportunity to bring a sense of revitalization and inspiration to Cedar Springs’ main corridor through new construction and through delivering a unique and high-quality offering,” said Orion’s public relations coordinator, Jason Wheeler. “We hope this will become a destination and a catalyst for future growth in the area.”

There have been plans for a major downtown overhaul in Cedar Springs for nearly 20 years, and while the $2.3 million Cedar Springs Brewing Co. project isn’t exactly a true catalyst, it certainly can act like one.

“The brewery is a huge boost,” said Donna Clark, director of the Cedar Springs Public Library. “It’s beautiful and inviting. His plan is to draw people to downtown Cedar Springs.”

In September, the library started a fundraising campaign to finish up funding for a $1.5 million new library across the street from the brewery, along Cedar Creek. The project has $600,000 toward its goal and construction hopefully will start in spring 2016. Clark said the plan is to begin soliciting bids in February.

The library has waited 15 years for the right time, Clark said; it’s the initial project in Cedar Springs’ master plan for downtown development, which was updated in 2011 after an original draft in 2005. The redevelopment plan is multi-faceted and will be undertaken as various fundraising campaigns are completed.

“There’s a large-scale plan for the property — for the heart of Cedar Springs,” Clark said.

Included in Phase I of the master plan is an outdoor amphitheater designed to look like an old train depot — a train once ran through the property. Also early in the redevelopment plan is cleaning up and allowing public access along Cedar Creek.

Phase II includes an indoor banquet facility for rental use. Phase III includes a community and recreation center that will house the city’s offices.

Clark said the community’s hope is to make downtown Cedar Springs similar to downtown Rockford.

“We’re trying to think outside of the box and always asking the question, ‘What’s good for Cedar Springs?’” Clark said. “What kind of legacy are we leaving?”

As for the brewery, which is scheduled to open sometime this month, Ringler is confident it will be ready to go. He designed the facility for traditional German brewing methods, which can include more tanks, and much more time, than other methods. He’s starting with a 15-barrel brew system — a barrel is approximately 31 gallons — and will have an initial annual capacity of 1,500 barrels.

Plans are to make a mix of ales and lagers, Ringler said, noting there’s 3,000 years of brewing history prior to the invention of lagering. The brewery’s two flagship beers will be an original-style weissbier — a bit darker and nuttier than the blonde, banana and clove style many are familiar with today — and a Salzburg Marzen, an approachable lager based on daily drinking beers in Germany.

“I love double IPAs and barrel-aged beers as much as anyone, but you can’t drink them all the time,” Ringler said. “Given our community, we have to be a bit of a catchall. They’ll be a bit more than what commercial beers are, but you can see where they came from and you can enjoy them on a regular basis.”

There are plans to can and distribute under a brand called Kusterer, named for the 19th century Grand Rapids brewing pioneer Christoph Kusterer. Kusterer was the city’s second brewer and built one of the largest breweries in the Midwest before dying in a shipwreck in Lake Michigan in 1880.

Ringler hopes the brand will lead to growth, but he’s not banking on it just yet.

“The pattern most people are using is to start as a smaller brewery, turn right around after being right up against a wall and reinvest,” Ringler said. “This way, we can get to a certain number before seeking reinvestment.”

First and foremost, Ringler wants the brewery to be a gathering spot for the community.

He said there are three places along U.S. 131 between Rockford and Big Rapids to stop and get a meal and adult beverage, including his establishment. He said the Cedar Springs community needs a place to call their own.

He knows being a production brewery is hard but isn’t worried about an impending “bubble” in the beer industry. He notes that in 1874, there were 4,100 breweries serving an American population of 39 million. Today, there are 320 million people in the United States and just more than 4,000 breweries.

“We’re still a long way from saturation,” he said. “Even then there was a lot of consolidation, and a lot of the breweries were really small. The future is a lot of small breweries.”

Ringler is set on Cedar Springs Brewing serving as a restaurant to the surrounding community, with a menu that offers a variety of Bavarian and modern bar food. He even has used some panels from the old Schnitzelbank restaurant in Grand Rapids.

“After a football game, they go to Rockford or Greenville,” he said. “The average commute is 30 minutes, and then they go back to Grand Rapids for dinner. There’s an opportunity here to get on the ground floor of a community that was looking to call something their own.”

CEDAR SPRINGS, MI — An ambitious brewery and restaurant project in northern Kent County was approved this week for $285,614 in state economic development incentives.

The Cedar Springs Brewing Co., soon to be located at 95 North Main St. in downtown Cedar Springs, was approved for the performance-based grant by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation on Wednesday, Feb. 25.

While development in West Michigan’s rural cities and towns has focused mainly on retail corridors close to major highways in recent years, those same communities often struggle to attract investment in their downtowns.
But a number of cities hope to buck that trend by enticing developers back to Main Street and away from sprawling strip malls. Increasingly, they’re also finding a partner in the state’s placemaking initiatives, as well as a common anchor tenant — microbreweries.

On Tuesday, Oct. 14, crews break ground on the Cedar Springs Brewing Co., another addition to the ever-expanding West Michigan beer industry, and one that Ringler hopes can become a destination stop in northern Kent County.

“We’ll be relatively German-centric,” said Ringler, an investment advisor with degrees in history and brewing science who is jumping back into the industry after one-time stints at Atwater Brewing in Detroit and the former Grand Rapids Brewing Co. on 28th Street SE.

“That’s my background and passion, and it’s something not many of the craft brewers are really focusing on,” he said. “A lot of places dabble with the German stuff, but I definitely have some ideas I want to do that nobody is really doing.”

But first, Ringler needs a building. At 11 a.m. Tuesday, Orion Construction crews will break ground at 95 North Main St. NE in Cedar Springs, where an 1890s-era storefront was demolished last month to make way for the new operation.

Wrecking the building at 95 N. Main St. in Cedar Springs to make way for David Ringler’s new microbrewery, opening next year.

The Michigan Economic Development Corporation is considering a community revitalization grant for the project, which MEDC assistance specialist Ryan Kilpatrick characterized as a likelihood because the “project is anticipated to have a transformational effect on downtown Cedar Springs.”

Ringler, a German-trained brewer who spent some time abroad, looked at locations in Lansing and Grand Rapids before settling on Cedar Springs, a community hurting for some new development. Metro area traffic data shows about 10,000 cars flow daily through the city’s downtown stretch of Northland Drive NW, “but nobody stops.”